A DEVOTED mum has told how she repeatedly refused doctors’ advice to turn off her three-year-old son’s life support machine after he fell under a bus and his heart stopped for 30 minutes.

Little Deshai Gillespie was rushed to Birmingham Children’s hospital after his leg got caught under a National Express double decker in Druids Heath on his way to nursery in October.

He was dragged along when the number 49 bus started moving and was left severely brain damaged and his left leg had to be amputated.

Deshai was on a life support machine for a month.

And medics advised his mum Sherise Gillespie that it would be best to turn off the machine.

But she refused and Deshai survived.

Bus driver Thomas Harvey, 49, of School Road, Yardley Wood, has pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court.

Sobbing Miss Gillespie, who is now her son’s full-time carer, told the court how her life changed forever as she walked with her son to catch the bus in Bells Lane not far from the flats where they were living at the time.

As they got closer to the shelter she saw the bus had its doors open so she let go of Deshai’s hand to let him walk ahead.

She said they approached from the back of the vehicle, with her son running up the gap between the shelter and the bus.

“He got to the doors and looked at me as if to say what should he do and I told him to get on the bus,” she said. “The bus started to move and Deshai fell out as he was on the platform.

“I screamed in shock as to what was the bus driver doing moving the bus and Deshai was looking up at me as the wheel caught him and dragged him.

“The driver got out and came to look and I told him to reverse the bus so I could get it off Deshai.”

She said at that point her son was trapped under the bus lying on his tummy with his pelvis and legs in the road and the top half of his body on the kerb.

“He was looking up at me saying ‘momma’, I think he was in shock because he was calm but was turning blue,” she said.

When the bus was moved she pulled her son on to the grass verge and a passing nurse stopped and gave first aid whilst they waited for the paramedics.

“I was trying to keep him awake because he was slowly closing his eyes and I was talking, saying ‘mummy’s here’,” she said.

When they got to hospital Deshai was rushed straight into emergency surgery and his heart stopped beating for 30 minutes.

“The doctors came to me numerous times saying he was totally brain dead and the only part of his brain which was working was the brain stem which was controlling his breathing,” she said.

“But I asked them not to turn off the machine and he survived.”

Miss Gillespie said he had been left with severe brain damage. “He can’t talk or communicate, he can’t sit up, he can only use his left hand and he can’t hold his head up or chew his food and has to have a gastric tube. But he is now back home and I am his full time carer.”

Mark Turner, defending, said although his client had pleaded guilty, he maintains that he had closed the doors before moving off and that Deshai had slipped and fallen after this.

“I suggest that Deshai was running and because it was raining and the non-slip surface had finished, that was the point where he fell between the kerb and the bus. He never got on the bus and his foot fell down as he tried to get on the bus,” he said.

But David Parsons, prosecuting, said this was not the case.

“We say he pulled away before closing the doors, he failed to make the proper observations before doing so. If he had that he would have seen Deshai trying to get on the bus,” he said.

“If the doors had been shut Deshai would not have tried to get on the bus.”